Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone

Book Description

Accessibility is now a legal requirement for all national
government Web sites in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the
European Union. Throughout the world, many other
organizations--universities, schools, and private companies--are
recognizing that accessibility is a moral and business imperative;
many are adopting policies aimed at making Web resources accessible
to the more than six hundred million people with disabilities
worldwide.

Maximum Accessibility is a comprehensive resource
for creating Web sites that comply with new U.S. accessibility
standards and conform to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. This book offers an overview
of key issues, discusses the standards in depth, and presents
practical design techniques, up-to-date technologies, and testing
methods to implement these standards for maximum accessibility. You
will learn how to:

Write effective text equivalents for images and audio
files

Caption soundtracks and describe the action of videos and
animation

Set up data and layout tables that make sense to the ear and
eye

Design Web forms that people can interact with via the keyboard
and other input devices

Label forms so that people who use talking browsers can give
the right information at the right time

Make scripts accessible to people who don't use a mouse

Create simple PDF files that are accessible to people with
disabilities

Use cascading style sheets to make your thoroughly accessible
pages look great

Throughout the book, case studies illustrate how inadvertent
accessibility barriers on major Web sites affect the ability of
people with disabilities to locate information, participate in
e-commerce, and explore the richness of the Web. These case studies
demonstrate how certain design features can make access much
harder, and how other features can greatly ease the use of a page
or site.

Most of all, this leading-edge guide reveals that a little extra
design consideration up front can help you create a site that is
not only a pleasure for people with disabilities, but attractive
and pleasing for all interested users. In short, Maximum
Accessibility shows why good design is accessible
design.